Hausmann Biography II: AWAY with EXPRESIONISM, LONG LIVE DADDAISM!!!

Hausmann enrolled at Arthur Lew-Funcke's art school, one of many Berlin private art schools.  From 1908 and 1911 he worked on his first typographical designs as well as glass window designs, and studied anatomy and nude drawing. 

Although married with a child, Hausmann began a very intense love affair with fellow Daddaist artist, Hanna Hoch, in 1915.  it was said to be an "artistically productive but turbulent bond".  They continued their relationship, traveled and inspired each other till it was ended in 1922.  Hoch was supposedly deeply in love with Hausmann, even though rumor is that he was an abusive man, and would not divorce his wife for Hoch.

 

portrait of hannah hoch, 1916, by Hausmann

In 1916, Hausmann met the two men whose radicalism helped build his idea of a new beginning, these men were, psychoanalyst Otto Gross (an anarchist and early disciple of Siegmund Freud, who considered psychoanalysis to be preparatory work for a revolution), and  the radical writer Franz Jung (and avid reader of Walt Whitman and student of Gross).  Driven and inspired by these men and their ideas, "Hausmann understood himself to be a pioneer for the birth of the new man. The notion of destruction as an act of creation was the point of departure for Hausmann's Dadasophy, his theoretical contribution to Berlin Dada".

Hausmann was one of a group of young radicals that began to form the basis of Berlin Dada in 1917.  and was part of the foundation of the "Club Dada" and the publication of the first "Dadaist Manifesto" in 1918.   In 1919 Hausmann also edited the journal Der Dada, which was a periodical containing drawings, poems and satires, which were in different typesets of opposing fonts and signs.

cover of Der Dada, with poem and design by Hausmann, 1919

Hausmann pushed the boundaries of what people considered art, and greatly contributed to the Dada style, helping to continually broaden it.  He incorporated his passion of writing and his views on the world in his art and constantly blurred the lines between visual art, poetry, music, and dance.
In 1918 Hausmann began a technique called photomontage, which incorporated collage elements into his work, influenced by previously seen war photomontages he came across on his travels.  He used this process as a tool of satire and political protest.  And, which many of his great works derive from.  Hausmann later embraced and helped pave the way for something called "optophonetic" poems.  These poems were a new idea of combining sound poetry and visual poetry.  An abstract poem.

Also in 1918, Hausmann published his manifesto.  The views and opinions of Expressionism and Daddaism.  He no longer was influenced nor impressed with Expressionism, although it was the art in which he started.  In his manifesto, "Synthetic Cino of Painting", Hausmann bashes Expressionism and suggests that the process, goal, and art of Daddaism greatly surpasses Expressionists' and their  "exploitation of so called echoes of the soul".   He felt this art was simple, arrogant and over dramatized.  This rage against Expressionist painting and the people who supported it, led to his photomontage "The Art Critic".

The Art Critic, 1919, Hausmann